Recent Submissions
Item Race and the Greek system in the 21st Century: Centering the voices of Asian American women.
(2009-11-13T15:15:47Z) Park, JulieThis study examines both the presence and absence of Asian Americans in a sorority system at a predominantly White institution in the Southeastern U.S. Using critical race theory to analyze interviews with eighteen Asian American college women, half of whom belonged to sororities and half who did not, the study asks the following questions: How do Asian American women both inside and outside Greek life view sororities? Are sororities a site where race still matters? How do Asian American women recognize the role of race or downplay its significance in their perceptions of sororities?Item Taking Race into Account: Charting Student Attitudes towards Affirmative Action
(2009-11-13T15:01:56Z) Park, JulieThis paper examines student attitudes towards affirmative action over 4 years of college. Asian American and Latino/a students were more likely than White students to disagree strongly or somewhat with abolishing affirmative action after 4 years of college. A studentà ¢ s attitude towards the policy as a first-year student, peer group influence, and political orientation were significant predictors of student attitudes of affirmative action during the fourth year of college. The findings suggest that while college plays some role in shaping affirmative action attitudes, its influence is somewhat limited in comparison to the background traits and attitudes that students bring to college.Item Asian American College Students and Civic Engagement
(2009-11-13T14:58:03Z) Park, Julie J.; Lin, Monica H.; Poon, Oiyan A.; Chang, Mitchell J.This chapter centers Asian American young adults within a discussion about civic engagement by highlighting findings from 35 years of data on Asian American college freshmen. It will also address future directions for Asian American undergraduate student civic engagement, taking immigration and population trends into account. Calling attention to Asian American civic engagement within the college context achieves at least two main goals. First, it will help scholars, practitioners, and policy makers move beyond racial stereotypes of this group and consider their complete college experiences, including their involvement outside the classroom. Doing so will help facilitate efforts to develop curricular and co-curricular practices that can better serve the learning and development of this fast-growing population in higher education. Second, examining these patterns of civic engagement will shed light on how Asian American students, as part of the future of our nation, are positioned for greater participation in a democratic U.S. society.Item Attitudes and Advocacy: Understanding Faculty Views on Racial/Ethnic Diversity
(2009-10-08T18:04:16Z) Park, Julie J.; Denson, NidaDiversity has been a hot-button issue in higher education for the past several decades (Chang, Witt, Jones & Hakuta, 2003). A significant portion of research has been dedicated to how students experience the campus racial climate (Hurtado, Milem, Clayton- Pederson, & Allen, 1998; Rankin & Reason, 2005), their views on policies such as affirmative action (Sax & Arredondo, 1999), and how they participate in diversity-related activism (Rhoads, 1998). However, less is known about how faculty feel about diversity policies on their campuses, how important they think diversity is to undergraduates, and their own commitments to fostering a diverse environment (Flores & Rodriguez, 2006; American Council on Education, 2000). Faculty play a critical role in the life of the university. They design and teach the curriculum, conduct research that advances the existing knowledge base, and set guidelines that determine many of the standards for their campuses. They make up the body from which department heads, deans, and college presidents come from. Trustees may serveterms, students cycle in and out, but once tenured, faculty are there to stay. Because faculty play such a sustaining role in the life of the university, it is essential to better understand their attitudes towards diversity, especially in a time period where policies geared towards increasing access to higher education for students of color continue to be challenged (Chang, et al., 2003). In order to better understand faculty attitudes towards diversity, specifically racial/ethnic diversity, we created a composite variable that taps into a variety of faculty attitudes towards diversity including their commitments to promoting racial understanding and their views on the role of diversity in undergraduate education. We refer to this variable throughout the study as à à à ¢ Diversity Advocacy.à à à ¢ The purpose of the study is to examine how Diversity Advocacy varies within subsets of faculty, as well as to identify predictors of faculty attitudes regarding diversity.